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IFEX members call for Turkish translator, women's rights activist to be freed

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Ayşe Berktay in Bakırköy Women’s Prison.

Ali Berktay/PEN American Center

The following letter was initiated by PEN American Center and has been signed by over two dozen IFEX members. It calls for freedom for those imprisoned in Turkey for exercising their right to freedom of expression, including prominent translator and cultural and women's rights activist Ayşe Berktay:

We are writing to protest the continued imprisonment of journalists, writers and academics in Turkey, including prominent translator and cultural and women's rights activist Ayşe Berktay, winner of the 2013 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. We believe she is just one of many who have been persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Police arrested Berktay and raided her home on 3 October 2011, seizing personal papers and materials, though no arrest or search warrant had been issued. She was eventually charged under the Anti Terror Law with “membership of an illegal organisation” for allegedly “planning to stage demonstrations aimed at destabilising the state, plotting to encourage women to throw themselves under police vehicles so as to create a furor, and attending meetings outside Turkey on behalf of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK),” a banned pro-Kurdish party. The indictment specifically refers to international conferences she attended, where she is accused of having served as the organisation's “international advocate.”

Berktay is a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), a legal political party with 36 elected representatives in Turkey's Parliament. Berktay is currently being held in Bakirköy Women's Prison in Istanbul. Her trial is ongoing and she could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Anti-terrorism legislation has long been used by the authorities to justify the jailing of writers, publishers, journalists, academics, and politicians in Turkey. In November 2012, a PEN International delegation visited Ankara to express concern about the alarming rise in prosecutions of writers and journalists in the last two years, noting that more than 70 writers and journalists are currently in prison, and at least 60 other writers, publishers, and journalists are on trial - ensnared in legal processes that can last years.

While government officials, including Turkish President Abdullah Gül, acknowledged that the spike in trials of writers is casting a shadow over more positive trends in democratization and economic development in Turkey, prosecutions continue and new cases are being opened all the time - including one against nine Board Members of PEN Turkey, who could face charges under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which prohibits insults to the Turkish Republic, Turkish ethnicity, and Turkish governmental institutions. The investigation relates to an official PEN Turkey protest of the trial of well-known composer Fazil Say for tweets that were allegedly “insulting to religion.” He has now been sentenced to 10 months in prison, now suspended.

However, just last week, dozens of people associated with the KCK, including journalists Ferhat Arslan, Zeynep Kuray and Sadık Topaloğlu, were released from prison pending trial. We ask that Ayşe Berktay be freed as well, along with others who have been imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression, as guaranteed under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human and Democratic Rights, to which Turkey is a signatory. We therefore call for Berktay's immediate and unconditional release, and for charges against those who exercise their right to free expression to be withdrawn.

After already cracking down on freedom of information in recent years, President Erdoğan has taken advantage of the abortive coup d’état and the state of emergency in effect since 20 July to silence many more of his media critics, not only Gülen movement media and journalists but also, to a lesser extent, Kurdish, secularist and left-wing media.

Authorities prosecuted a number of prominent journalists on terrorism-related charges, including the editor in chief and the Ankara bureau chief of the Cumhuriyet daily, who were arrested in connection with the paper’s coverage of alleged weapons shipments to Syria by Turkish intelligence services.

The report is a frank assessment of the recent regime of online censorship and mass surveillance against a backdrop of longstanding, serious abuses of the judicial process and attacks on freedom of expression by Turkish authorities.

The Turkish authorities severely restricted the right to freedom of expression of journalists and writers during and after the Gezi Park protests in 2013, English PEN and PEN International said in their joint report.

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